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We really should have locked up every single banker on Wall Street after 2007. The meme of private property has caused so much harm in the world. We have messes

We really should have locked up every single banker on Wall Street after 2007. The meme of private property has caused so much harm in the world. We have messes like this house sitting, rotting, festering, on society. We should excise the cancer of capitalism before it has fully matastisized and killed us all.

solotronics 8y ago
Replaced by what exactly? A free market is the natural way to allocate scarce resources. It is easy to say "allocate to those in need first" but who decides? Yes there are other possible systems but I don't think any of them have been remotely as sucessful overall as capitalism. There is a natural equilibrium found in a free market. Those who can produce cheaper and better quality make money.
- rrcaptain 8y ago
  > A free market is the natural way to allocate scarce resources Capitalism didn't invent the market, trade predates agriculture. And there's hardly anything natural about a system where every individual is incentivized to screw over others. >It is easy to say "allocate to those in need first" but who decides There's _literally_ centuries of thought put into how to allocate resources outside of capitalism. I can't explain them in sufficient detail in a HN comments section, but you can start with the Conquest of Bread. >Yes there are other possible systems but I don't think any of them have been remotely as sucessful overall as capitalism. Success by what measure? And defined by who? Because capitalism's measures of "success" are often flawed and often more evident of its failings than its success. And if you're going off of metrics like life expectancy, Cuba has the USA (and many other capitalist countries) beat. And alternative systems have largely been successful, especially when you consider how actively capitalist forces sabotaged them. The USSR pre and post Stalin was extremely prosperous and the fall of the USSR has only left piles of human missery. Don't forget the US actively prevented the Communist Party from winning elections in former Soviet Bloc countries. >There is a natural equilibrium found in a free market. Those who can produce cheaper and better quality make money. Those who can produce profit make money. That is often not cheaper (when you account for externalities) or better quality.
  - jlawson 8y ago
    "there's hardly anything natural about a system where every individual is incentivized to screw over others." Watch a nature documentary some time. One with predators, or diseases, or parasites.
    - vageli 8y ago
      > "there's hardly anything natural about a system where every individual is incentivized to screw over others." > Watch a nature documentary some time. One with predators, or diseases, or parasites. Isn't predation typically cross-species? What exactly is your point here?
      - jlawson 8y ago
        >What exactly is your point here? I thought it was obvious: Every individual organism in the natural ecological system, often has a strong incentive to screw over the others. This is inherent in a universe where there is a limited amount of matter and energy, inhabited by organisms who can grow in population without limit. Once all the matter and energy are occupied by organisms, the only way an organism can increase its population is by screwing over other organisms for their matter/energy. This is the rule of nature, but not just "trees and animals"-type nature. It's encoded into the very laws of physics which say the universe is limited, but organisms can replicate without limit. This was also the rule of humanity up until the Industrial Revolution. It's just that a lot of people have forgotten it since then.
erulabs 8y ago
Ah yes - the scourge of society - the empty house, the misallocated resource, the malinvested fund. If imperfect utilization of resources is is a cancer, what words do you reserve for war, genocide, or starvation? Many many many things worse in this world than a confusing legal battle over an old home. No systems are perfect, but free markets sure are pragmatic!
- rrcaptain 8y ago
  And much of those things are part of, and often actively caused by, capitalism, including war and starvation. The legal battle over some obscure bit of private property is not the worst bit of capitalism, I didn't say it was. But it's an absurdly obvious example of how capitalism is a failed system.
dang 8y ago
Please do not post ideological battle comments to HN, regardless of your ideology. It's not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: it looks like you've been using this site primarily for that. That's an abuse of HN and actually something we ban accounts for. Please review the guidelines and use HN as intended from now on.

solotronics 8y ago

Replaced by what exactly? A free market is the natural way to allocate scarce resources. It is easy to say "allocate to those in need first" but who decides? Yes there are other possible systems but I don't think any of them have been remotely as sucessful overall as capitalism. There is a natural equilibrium found in a free market. Those who can produce cheaper and better quality make money.

rrcaptain 8y ago
> A free market is the natural way to allocate scarce resources Capitalism didn't invent the market, trade predates agriculture. And there's hardly anything natural about a system where every individual is incentivized to screw over others. >It is easy to say "allocate to those in need first" but who decides There's _literally_ centuries of thought put into how to allocate resources outside of capitalism. I can't explain them in sufficient detail in a HN comments section, but you can start with the Conquest of Bread. >Yes there are other possible systems but I don't think any of them have been remotely as sucessful overall as capitalism. Success by what measure? And defined by who? Because capitalism's measures of "success" are often flawed and often more evident of its failings than its success. And if you're going off of metrics like life expectancy, Cuba has the USA (and many other capitalist countries) beat. And alternative systems have largely been successful, especially when you consider how actively capitalist forces sabotaged them. The USSR pre and post Stalin was extremely prosperous and the fall of the USSR has only left piles of human missery. Don't forget the US actively prevented the Communist Party from winning elections in former Soviet Bloc countries. >There is a natural equilibrium found in a free market. Those who can produce cheaper and better quality make money. Those who can produce profit make money. That is often not cheaper (when you account for externalities) or better quality.
- jlawson 8y ago
  "there's hardly anything natural about a system where every individual is incentivized to screw over others." Watch a nature documentary some time. One with predators, or diseases, or parasites.
  - vageli 8y ago
    > "there's hardly anything natural about a system where every individual is incentivized to screw over others." > Watch a nature documentary some time. One with predators, or diseases, or parasites. Isn't predation typically cross-species? What exactly is your point here?
    - jlawson 8y ago
      >What exactly is your point here? I thought it was obvious: Every individual organism in the natural ecological system, often has a strong incentive to screw over the others. This is inherent in a universe where there is a limited amount of matter and energy, inhabited by organisms who can grow in population without limit. Once all the matter and energy are occupied by organisms, the only way an organism can increase its population is by screwing over other organisms for their matter/energy. This is the rule of nature, but not just "trees and animals"-type nature. It's encoded into the very laws of physics which say the universe is limited, but organisms can replicate without limit. This was also the rule of humanity up until the Industrial Revolution. It's just that a lot of people have forgotten it since then.

erulabs 8y ago

Ah yes - the scourge of society - the empty house, the misallocated resource, the malinvested fund. If imperfect utilization of resources is is a cancer, what words do you reserve for war, genocide, or starvation? Many many many things worse in this world than a confusing legal battle over an old home. No systems are perfect, but free markets sure are pragmatic!

rrcaptain 8y ago
And much of those things are part of, and often actively caused by, capitalism, including war and starvation. The legal battle over some obscure bit of private property is not the worst bit of capitalism, I didn't say it was. But it's an absurdly obvious example of how capitalism is a failed system.

dang 8y ago

Please do not post ideological battle comments to HN, regardless of your ideology. It's not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: it looks like you've been using this site primarily for that. That's an abuse of HN and actually something we ban accounts for. Please review the guidelines and use HN as intended from now on.